We are delighted to announce the opening of the group show In the Pines – Slight Return. In the Pines – Slight Return is a revisited version of the first exhibition the gallery made in Copenhagen in 2009.

In the Pines is the title of a folk song which has retained it’s mystery and mythology despite being interpreted thousands of times by an astounding array of musicians over at least the last 150 years. The song is an open text, without fixed style, lyrical content, gender or race. This exhibition will become another of the thousands of variants on its theme. The exhibition will be hung on walls clad in a life-size forest pattern by Richard Woods. It will include some works from the first iteration of the show and new works made specifically for this latest version. Just like the song has been slightly changed over the years making it fit for the contemporary interpreter and listener. Bringing together represented artists, artists we have collaborated with previously and artists new to the gallery, In the Pines – Slight Return is radically relocated from a pine forest into a birch forest. This new setting adds a very different tone to the exhibition, while the suggestive content is somehow uneasy.

I asked my Captain for the time of day,
He said he throwed his watch away

In the Pines is a seemingly simple song which has been dated back to 1870 in the U.S but is thought to be older and British in origin. Hundreds of singers have used the songs openness and anonymity to render it in their own style, notably Leadbelly, The Louvin Brothers, Bill Monroe, Dolly Parton, Nirvana, Bill Callahan etc. Its timeless lyrics speak of loneliness, death, fear, landscape, weather, time, eternity, mystery, trains and change. It has endured trans-atlantic travel, time, cultural change and gone on to exist in seemingly incompatible genres; Country, Blues, Bluegrass, Punk, Grunge, Alt.Country, Folk, Jazz. As with the singers of the song, the artists here present a seemingly similar content which, through their individual voices and techniques, produce a broad range of interpretation and atmosphere.